The U.N. Owen is adrift in interstellar space. With no lights, no life support, no help for ten trillion miles, it seems as though things can't get any worse. Then, Blore finds the body. Ten Little Astronauts is Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None set in space. The novella takes the essence of Christie's murder mystery and condenses it down into a tense, hard sci-fi thriller. Ten astronauts are awoken from suspended animation to deal with a crisis on board… (more)

The U.N. Owen is adrift in interstellar space. With no lights, no life support, no help for ten trillion miles, it seems as though things can't get any worse. Then, Blore finds the body. Ten Little Astronauts is Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None set in space. The novella takes the essence of Christie's murder mystery and condenses it down into a tense, hard sci-fi thriller. Ten astronauts are awoken from suspended animation to deal with a crisis on board their ship. Selected from a crew of thousands, none of them knows any of the others: all they know is that one of their number is a murderer. And until they work out who it is, none of them can go back to sleep. With the environment of the ship itself acting as an added threat, the story progresses at a faster pace with a more rapid series of twists. Setting the mystery in interstellar space – where a radio message could take years to reach anybody – also offers an immediate explanation as to why the characters can't simply call for help, eliminating a lot of the introductory scene-setting of Christie's original. Despite the futuristic setting, the world of Ten Little Astronauts conforms as closely as possible to the scientific understanding of the present day, based on extensive research drawing on everything from the ion thrusters of NASA to the vessels preserved at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum. Grounded in reality, the science fiction acts as a backdrop to a mystery that can be broken down and solved by conventional means. The characters and premise will be well familiar to fans of Agatha Christie, but the story itself is brand new.